Operation Teddy Bear
by lucybubblychase
Summary: Two demigods walk into a toy store… -or- Percy catches Octavian choosing victims for ceremonial sacrifice. Takes place right before Christmas and after BoO. One-shot.


_I know, I know. Octavian died a crazy lunatic who exploded in a giant kaboom of onager and Gaea. All will be explained in due time. :)_

 _Disclaimer: I don't own Toys-R-Us, beanie babies, or any other corporation you recognize in this story._

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Toys R Us. The land of video games and hundred dollar children's cars, rubix cubes and hula hoops. The neighbor of Babies R Us, the home of cribs, bibs, binkies, stuffies, and all the other -ies drowned in an overload of candy colors and pastel. The perfect place for any kid under the age of eight, and for new mothers looking to decorate their little nurseries with little toys for little humans. However, this wasn't the case for one teenaged boy walking suspiciously into Toys R Us that morning. Octavian, legacy of Apollo and centurion- well- former centurion of the First Cohort, only had one mission: to select an adequately sized group of specimens for his annual augural sacrifices.

Octavian had suffered complete and utter humiliation at the battle against Gaea. He had aimed the onager and fired it, but his robes had caught on a mechanism of the battle machine, causing the fabric to tear as he shrieked hysterically in horror and embarrassment. Subsequently, Gaea was destroyed in a extraordinary supernova of light and fire. He had retained some pride in knowing he had saved both his valiant Romans and the obnoxious Greeks until Reyna revealed weeks later in front of the both camps that the _graecus_ , Leo Valdez, was the actual reason for Gaea's destruction. Thus, he was ripped of all prestige and honor and instead labelled a lunatic and a madman.

He may not have become praetor, but this slight setback would not annul his duties as the rightful augur of the legion. Reyna and Frank had attempted to rid him of those duties, insisting that he was too "mentally unstable" and in Hazel's words, too "off your rocker," for any camp responsibilities, but they let him be after he forced them out of the temple, aiming teddy bear after teddy bear at them as they backed away cautiously and reluctantly toward the door.

The blonde took a deep breath as the glass doors automatically slid open before him. He stepped into the store and speed-walked— shoes squeaking on the linoleum, eyes darting around every other second— until he reached his target location, the stuffed animal aisle. His eyes widened in awe as he took in the dozens of options at his disposal. Canines and felines, pigs and sheep littered the lower shelves, while rainbow-maned, shimmery iridescent unicorns were scattered at eye level. As always, the prized giant teddy bears sat on the top, towering over everyone and everything in the store.

A voice coming from behind him made him jump and turn around instantly. "Hey kid, you lost?" An employee, who looked to be in her early twenties, spoke in a semi-bored tone while chewing some gum. "Video games are on the left side of the store, and fidget spinners go in the front." Octavian's eyes glinted murderously at the being who dared to interfere with his mission.

"Leave, you foolish mortal," he hissed, clutching a unicorn to his chest, as if to defend the specimen from the mortal who had the audacity to speak to him. _'The mere mortal is not worthy of my presence,'_ he thought arrogantly to himself. The girl rolled her eyes, blew a bubble, and popped it as she walked away, muttering something under her breath about weirdos and freaks.

With the intrusion dealt with, Octavian returned to the shelves, browsing through beanie-babies and cats and dogs as if they were books in a library. Quantity was most certainly important, but so was quality.

Meanwhile, another demigod with a specific mission strolled the aisles of the store's infant section. Percy Jackson had flown over to San Francisco— with Zeus's permission, of course— to help out at Camp Jupiter and to visit Annabeth, who'd gone to stay with her family for the holidays. He'd already gotten his mom a Christmas present: a pair of Finding Dory oven mitts to go with the Finding Nemo apron he'd gotten for her as a child. Frayed and worn-down, Sally's old brown mitts often left her with burns that healed slowly, leaving patchy scars across her skin. He'd figured a second gift wouldn't hurt, and he knew that thinking about the baby would alleviate stress about her publisher's strict deadlines.

Unfortunately, he had no idea what he wanted to buy for his future sibling. His childhood hadn't exactly been filled with fluffy blankets and toy cars; Smelly Gabe had always snatched up all their money and wasted it on gambling and beer. What he did remember was staying awake every night, petrified, eyes wide open, because he saw glimpses of figures moving in the shadows and heard whispers of strange hissing sounds echoing off the walls of his room. When the noises grew too frightening for him to bear, he'd run to his mother, who'd slept on the couch because Gabe refused to share, seeking comfort. The little footsteps would wake up his former step-father, and Gabe would lumber into the living room, beer bottle in hand, threatening to pull out his belt if Percy woke him up again.

It turned out that a baby basilisk had decided to make itself at home under his bed. Luckily, the serpent's powers weren't strong enough to cause any real harm. The most it could do was puff out little clouds of smoke that disaperated harmlessly into the atmosphere. Percy remembered his mom throwing some leftover birthday cake into the fireplace and murmuring a few words he couldn't quite make out. The next day, the basilisk was gone. Sally held her little seven year old son tightly and assured him that the monster wouldn't bother him again, even though he remembered seeing the petrified fear in her eyes when she saw the snake. Snapping at her like always, Gabe grumbled that he needed food and sent Sally to the kitchen to make him more seven-layer dip.

Somehow, giving his baby sister a firebreathing snake didn't seem like the best idea. And so, Percy kept strolling through the aisles cluelessly, determined to find something that would make for a happy future.

Ten minutes later, Percy headed towards the checkout counter with a white-haired stuffed pegasus held tightly in his grasp. When he saw the winged equus, he'd immediately searched for one with black hair in honor of his loyal steed, Blackjack, but black pegasi didn't seem to be common in mortal legends. Making a mental note to buy donuts for Blackjack when he got back to Camp Half-Blood, he'd settled for the snowy-coated stuffie, grinning when he saw that it slightly resembled Porkpie, one of Blackjack's best buddies.

The nice old lady at the checkout gift wrapped the pegasus for him, making light conversation when Percy mentioned the stuffie was for his future baby sister. He was a little suspicious about her being so nice and well… normal, having had so many bad experiences with surprise monster attacks. There were really too many to count: Mrs. Dodds— well, Alecto— his former Pre-Algebra teacher, the Fates- who always freaked him out with the ominous yarn-snipping, the Enchilada lady with her Chihuahua at the St. Louis arch, Medusa with the creepy statues…

Luckily, this old lady just placed the pegasus in a nice gift bag, covered it in a sheet of red-and-silver candy cane tissue paper, and sent him on his merry way with a cheery, _'You have a nice day, honey-bumpkin,'_ which seemed a little too bubbly, but much, much nicer than potential petrification or any kind of attempt to send him to the Underworld for a visit to his dreary dear uncle.

At the next counter over, another cashier glanced suspiciously at the snarky blonde in the purple shirt pushing the overflowing cart of stuffed animals up the aisle. Having reached the lane, he abruptly stopped the cart, causing an elephant wearing a pink tutu to tumble off the pile. Octavian quickly snatched up the stuffie, dusted it off, and started piling the rest onto the counter.

The employee raised an eyebrow as she scanned each item with the never-ending beep of the machine, all thirty-seven of them. "Buying for… a daycare? Or a toy drive?"

Sending the cashier a glare as menacing the rays of Apollo's chariot, Octavian spat, "It's private business." The cashier kept scanning the items- _beep, beep, beep_ \- unfazed. Bubble gum girl had told her about the strange, prickly blonde.

"That'll be ninety-seven thirty-five. Cash or credit?"

Octavian threw a hundred dollar bill in her general direction, not looking back to see it flutter to the ground on his side of the counter. He shoved his cart forward, swept the stuffies in, leaning way over the counter for the stragglers, and pushed the cart of stuffies toward the automatic sliding doors as fast as he could. The ballerina elephant tumbled off of the pile again, abandoned in his path as he made his hasty escape.

He burst through as the automatic doors slid aside, only to crash into a certain black-haired, green-eyed demigod. The cart flipped over, scattering all the unicorns and teddy bears in an one yard radius in the parking lot and on the patch of grass in front of the store. Percy dropped his bag in surprise, and the little pegasus tumbled out, thankfully onto a pile of other stuffed animals, shielding its snowy coat from the horror of permanent grass stains.

Recovering from a small stumble, Percy rubbed his arm and frowned. "What are you doing here, Octavian?"

"Official… camp… business." Octavian spat as he rushed to lift the shopping cart back on its wheels, then scurried around, grabbing as many stuffed animals as he could in both arms.

Percy narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "Frank told me that he cut your budget. Where'd you get the money?"

Octavian dumped the armful of stuffed animals into the cart and barked out a laugh, almost cackling. If Percy wasn't sure before, via Iris messages from Hazel and Frank at Camp Jupiter, that Octavian had gone completely crazy, he sure was now.

Octavian grinned, almost manically, scrambling to grab his next load of stuffies. "Someone happened to put Dakota on treasury duty. All it took was spilling little extra sugar in his kool-aid, and he signed the check without a problem."

Percy recalled a conversation he'd had with Annabeth one afternoon at camp a few weeks ago while taking care of the horses and pegasi in the stables. They'd walked into the stables to find the equus, Blackjack most of all, crowded around an overturned bucket of sugar cubes. Percy had scooped up the spill and chastised the horses while Annabeth warned him to tuck the bucket somewhere more obscure. She'd read somewhere that sugar was more addictive than most illegal substances, especially to animals.

Snapping back to the present, Percy watched dubiously as Octavian continued to refill the shopping cart with stuffed animals, determination and arrogance plastered across his face. Only a few still remained on the lawn, and he scooped them up, tossing them into the cart.

" _Vale, graecus_ ," the augur spat as he shoved the fully loaded shopping cart towards the parking lot, seemingly heading in no particular direction but out. Struck with mild bewilderment, Percy watched Octavian struggle to move the cart as fast as possible, failing to move any more than about a foot a second. Octavian ran into a car backing out, cursed at the driver, and continued on his way. It was then that Percy noticed a white pegasus, his white pegasus, sitting on the top of the pile. Vexed, his eyes widened slowly in realization as he quickly grew more and more frantic. He hurriedly looked about the grass for the gift bag, snatched it up, and took off sprinting to catch his future sister's plushie.

"Hey! Get back here!" He yelled desperately to Octavian, who'd wheeled several meters away toward the end of the parking lot. Arriving customers got out of their cars and watched the strange spectacle, some genuinely worried for the sanity of both boys, some just amused. A little girl tugged at her father's hand and asked what they were doing, to which the father calmly replied that the boys were just playing tag. It was as good of an explanation as any.

Sweat pouring from the blonde's forehead, he yelled back, his voice echoing off the walls of the surrounding buildings. "Never! You, son of Neptune, will not impede my duties as augur of New Rome, descendant of Apollo, and savior of all!"

The retort only pushed Percy to run faster. His pegasus would not suffer the same fate as his poor panda pillow-pet had suffered. Not again, never again.

Meanwhile, Annabeth Chase turned on the tap in the bathroom of her family home in San Francisco, momentarily startled by that vibrant, misty rainbow that sprouted out of the faucet. She furrowed her brow in curiosity before fishing a drachma out of her pocket and tossing it into the mist.

The rainbow and shimmered and shifted to reveal an Iris message, seemingly projected from a broken lawn sprinkler near a store parking lot. As the image focused, Annabeth saw two teenage boys, the black-haired one furiously chasing the blond-haired one, who was pushing a shopping cart full of what looked like stuffed animals. Squinting at the image flickering in her sink, she realized that the two seemed very familiar. The boy with the black hair was Percy— of course it was Percy. The blonde was getting farther and farther away from the Iris message's source by the minute, but the teddy bear clutched in his hand as he pushed the cart gave him away.

Annabeth rolled her eyes as she turned off the faucet— breaking the connection— and grabbed her cell phone. The call was picked up on the second ring.

"Hey Hazel, can you pass a message to Frank and Reyna for me?"

Hazel replied assuringly.

"Can you tell them that we found Octavian, and that Percy should be chasing him into camp any minute?"

A series of exasperated sighs ensued from both girls. After a short silence, Hazel asked Annabeth a question people had asked her about Percy a thousand times.

"I… I honestly have no idea."

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 _Hi peeps!_

 _So yeah… this is a strange mix of sad and serious, aimless, goofy, and crack-ficy. I have no idea what purpose it serves in the world of PJO fanfics, but I do sincerely hope that someone smiled because of it._

 _Please review to tell me your thoughts, what parts you liked, what other ideas you have for me to write about, what your favorite cereal is…_

 _THANK YOU FOR READING!_

 _~Lucy_


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